Tuesday, May 27, 2014

These past few weeks have been kind of rough, work-wise. There's been a lot of change, and it's throwing me. And yet even as I write that, I know that one day I will look back on this time and see how good it was. I know this because I am constantly looking back and seeing how rich we were -- emotionally and materially. So I know that it's inevitable that I will look back on this time with a better understanding and perspective. Still, I'm kind of off.That all said, I wanted to revisit something that happened a few months ago that had a big positive impact on me. A woman I love dearly posted a Roz Chast cartoon from The New Yorker that I took to be making fun of people with food allergies and calling them jerks. It could be interpreted other ways, surely, but that was how I took it. I became upset, because I already know that allergies will always set Abbott apart from other kids. So I immediately hid it from my news feed.In therapy, my doc talks about my faulty assumption that keeping my emotions in is somehow beneficial for me or puts me in a powerful position. That the way for people to really know me (which is something that I want) is for me to be emotionally honest. And it's been a year, so it's starting to take hold. So I did what I would never have done before: I told her. I told her that I love her, and that the cartoon really upset me because it's something that I know Abbott will have to deal with. And then she did an amazing thing: She genuinely thanked me in the most beautiful and gracious way, for trusting her to care. It brought tears to my eyes because I realized what I had been doing all this time: withholding my trust from nearly everyone I know. And I know how I would feel if I thought people didn't trust me. It made me at once profoundly grateful for her enlightening reaction and incredibly sad for the opportunities I had shied away from.